CTDL 109: Artifacts from the skies

I’m a bit of an aviation buff, and I find this story in the latest Air & Space magazine to be endlessly fascinating. In addition to the notes by a pilot mentioned below, there are tales of shell casings found and all sorts of things. This is historically interesting, and also seems a great source for story ideas.

Sometimes the Garber restorers come across objects that help flesh out the story of the aircraft, much the way little details make a scene in a novel easier to picture. Museum Specialist Bob McLean came across such an artifact while helping to restore the Lockheed Vega Winnie Mae, renowned as the aircraft in which Wiley Post made the first two solo flights around the globe, in 1931 and 1933. The airplane had been donated to the Smithsonian in 1936, a year after Post had died. While in the cockpit, McLean stumbled on an oil-soaked scrap of paper. “At first I thought it was just a receipt,” he says. “But if you look closely, you can make out [numbers signifying] winds aloft and stations out west.” So far, it’s not known whether the handwriting is indeed Post’s.